Visual hierarchical key analysis

  • Authors:
  • Craig Stuart Sapp

  • Affiliations:
  • Stanford University

  • Venue:
  • Computers in Entertainment (CIE) - Theoretical and Practical Computer Applications in Entertainment
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

Tonal music is often conceived of as progressing through a sequence of key regions, usually starting and ending in the tonic key, with a journey away from the tonic key somewhere in the middle of the piece. This article presents a visual method of displaying the musical key structure of a composition in a single picture. The hierarchical plots can also show the relative strength of these key regions and how they develop out of the chordal substrate of the music.